My Godot

Eileen waited. She waited with dinner. She waited for her baby to grow. She waited for the night to fall. Then she waited for the sun to come up. She waited for summer to end. The grass browned and scratched her bare thighs. A squirrel raced to and from a tree, carrying away hazelnuts in its mouth. Eileen waited as a weed sprouted at her feet, hugged her ankles and poked itself inside the soft openings in her body. In that warm cavity, tendrils blanched the color of pickled asparagus, and the weed’s movement in Eileen’s belly made her briefly consider the idea of conception before dismissing it as gas. Nothing to be done, she said, burping softly and smelling vinegar. In the darkness of her belly there glowed a strip of red where light shown through seams of muscle frayed from pregnancy. The weed inched toward this slit of church glass but found the exit blocked so headed north where it twisted around her liver, passed through her ribs like thread on a loom only to knot in her throat. Now there was no way to hold the silence at bay. It’s safer to do nothing, Eileen thought. It’s better to wait. She shifted and settled as the tree shed its leaves and the weed discovered twin pale moons inside her head. Like the ivy that grew through the walls of her parents’ house and pushed its way out of the electrical outlet in her brother’s room, the weed found light once again.